Mike Wittmer

Month: December 2009

  • projecting their projection

    Christmas break is a good time to catch up on my reading, and I just skimmed an older book by Paul Vitz, Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism (1999).  Vitz’s book is a response to Feuerbach and Freud’s assertion that God is a projection of our human desires.  Vitz observes that 1) they…

  • half nelson

    I originally thought that I liked Ben Nelson and his principled stand against using our taxes to fund abortions.  But now I’m just outraged that his price for signing the health care bill was exempting his state of Nebraska from a large chunk of its cost.  Even worse, his utter lack of shame indicates that…

  • newsworthy

    60 Minutes ran an informative piece last night on the patriarch of the Orthodox Church in Istanbul.  The gist of the segment explained how Muslim Turkey is attempting to eliminate the 1700 year old church there.  It includes some stunning footage of early churches cut into the Tolkienesque mountains of Cappadocia, and is worth a…

  • the Jesus-driven life

    The lesson that I relearned from reading Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics II/1 and IV/1 this semester is that we need to start with Jesus, because if we don’t then he might not fit. A few weeks ago Rick Warren was on a special Thanksgiving edition of Meet the Press, and near the end of the…

  • homosexual practice and temple prostitution

    First Things published this satirical-with-a-point response from one Lutheran group to their cousins in the ELCA who recently voted to accept actively gay clergy and gay marriage.  My thanks to Matthew Westerholm for bringing this to my attention.

  • the new perspective and Barth

    Last week my Barth class read the Church Dogmatics, IV/1, p. 621-26, where Barth makes a few comments which seem relevant to the controversy surrounding the new perspective on Paul. 1. Barth agrees with the NPP that Paul used the term “works of the law” to refer to the ethnic boundary markers of “circumcision, the…

  • good sex

    Piles of grading have prevented me from blogging this week, but I did manage to finish this racy devotional for Our Daily Journey. It seems particularly appropriate given the winter storm that is burying us. If you’re single and snowed in, there’s always Scrabble. read > Proverbs 5:1-23 Drink water from your own well—share your…

  • the end of innocence

    Meredith Baxter played the mother on the television show, Family Ties, and today on Today she announced that, after three marriages and five children, she had decided that she would try being a lesbian. There goes what’s left of my childhood.  I don’t know what’s true anymore.  I suppose that next I’ll learn that Alex…